Vista do mar-Residents to get relief offer letters |24 May 2005

They will have six months to respond, saying whether or not they accept, and if they do, what form of relief they will opt for.

Fifty-eight of them have already been interviewed by Ministry of Land Use and Habitat (MLUH) officials and 11 have accepted the relief on offer, and more are expected to follow suit.

MLUH principal secretary Patrick Lablache said this in an interview on Friday May 20, during which he said 19 of the families are in fact housed by the Property Management Company, and the government will therefore only offer them alternative accommodation.

He said that the ministry has set aside identical waterfront plots on Ile Aurore for those residents of Vista do mar who wish to exchange their current pieces of land with the ones on offer on the reclaimed island.

“Each of the plots is about 600 square metres, and given that this is flat land, that’s a lot of land,” Mr Lablache said.

He recalled that MLUH Minister Joel Morgan and Mr Lablache himself met the residents on January 26 at Glacis, when a geophysicist from Seychelles National Oil Company (Snoc) explained to them what had resulted in the landslides.

He said that another expert from Reunion has studied the area and arrived at the same conclusion that the ground is being pulled downhill by gravity, a situation made worse by sustained heavy rains.

“Those who wish to accept the plots on offer will have to surrender their current houses which will be demolished, and they will be offered loans of up to R500,000 to construct new homes,” he said, adding that they will have a subsidised interest of only 2% and a repayment period of 20 years.

The residents will have the chance to salvage whatever they can from their damaged houses if they choose to vacate them before the houses are brought down.

He said residents who choose to construct houses on other plots they own elsewhere will qualify for the R500,000 soft loans but will need to demolish the houses they now have at Vista do mar.

“The owners who exchange the plots with those on offer at Ile Aurore will also be given priority to lease their former plots at Vista do mar if they wish to use them for growing crops.

He said those who wish to stay on will not be compelled to move out and will be assisted with non-repayable grants of up to R50,000 from the national disaster fund to repair their houses.

He nevertheless said that owners of houses in an area named the “Red zone” will not qualify for the R50,000 from the fund because the houses in that region are considered to be beyond repair.

“Residents who choose to stay within the affected area do so at their own risk,” Mr Lablache said.

He said loans borrowed from the Housing Finance Company by affected residents who choose to move out will be written off and the government will request commercial banks which have lent money to affected residents to “show compassion.”

The offers are being made to individuals but not to companies.
Mr Lablache said the government feels the moral obligation to assist the residents, even though it is not bound to do so since the affected houses are on private land.

Director general for Habitat Yvon Fostel said that the residents interviewed showed appreciation for what the government is doing for them, and noted that the two who did not turn up for the interview wished to but could not make it.